Provenance

Untraced until in the collection of Professor Reginald Alton (1919–2003) of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, from 1955 or earlier. Alton sold it at Sotheby’s on 19 March 1970, lot 139, for £1,400, where it was bought by John Mitchell & Son. It was sold at Sotheby’s on 13 November 1980, lot 35, for £4,000, and again at Sotheby’s on 10 March 1988, lot 85, for £13,000, whereafter it is untraced.

Comment

Ivy Bridge was a small village just below the southern tip of Dartmoor,1 named after its ivy-clad bridge crossing the Erme river. Towne’s large and highly coloured view suggest that by the mid-1770s he was not only gaining work on aristocratic estates but making business from Devon’s picturesque spots. Ivy Bridge’s picturesque qualities were well appreciated in the 1770s and 1780s,2 and Towne’s version dated 1784 also survives (FT412). Either this or the 1784 work was the 1933 Squire exhibit, called “exceedingly beautiful” by a reviewer.3